Mahwah, N.J. – Sharp revealed Wednesday that Digitalsmiths with Tribune Media Services (TMS) have been selected to enhance the video-discovery experience of Sharp’s 2014 lineup of Aquos LED smart televisions.
TiVo subsidiary Digitalsmiths’ Seamless Discovery Platform pre-integrated with TMS’ On Entertainment data will help add to Sharp’s smart-TV cross-catalog integration, enabling viewers to receive content recommendations with richer program descriptions and images for content available on a range of services.
The expansions are expected to enable viewers to search less and discover meaningful recommendations faster than before, the companies said.
Sharp’s new SmartCentral 3.0 Smart TV platform integrates various video providers’ catalogs including over-the-top (OTT), Leaner and video-on-demand (VOD), removing the viewers need to toggle between apps and TV inputs.
Sharp’s cross-platform smart guide integrates program information for content available from cable or satellite sources and streaming services. Using Sharp’s SmartCentral 3.0, viewers can receive content recommendations along with rich program descriptions and images for content available on a range of services, without having to switch TV inputs or apps.
Seamless Discovery conducts cross-catalog searches across providers to deliver consumers all the channels that a specific show is appearing on, giving them the choice of times and channels to view that specific show.
On Entertainment data from TMS is pre-integrated into the Digitalsmiths Seamless Discovery platform allowing the entertainment guides on Sharp SmartCentral 3.0 to present the most targeted cross-catalog content recommendations along with the best available program and episode descriptions, images and related content to consumers.
TMS’s Unique IDs synchronizes entertainment assets across various datasets and helps enable the advanced program discovery features of Sharp SmartCentral 3.0.
“Sharp continually strives to improve the viewer experience, and the SmartCentral 3.0 platform offers integrated search, the best apps and mobile connectivity,” said Vishnu Rao, Sharp product technology director. “Working with Digitalsmiths and TMS allows Sharp to bring the best content discovery experience to Sharp Aquos viewers.”
Sharp SmartCentral 3.0 is currently available on more than a dozen models of Sharp’s 2014 Aquos larg-screen LED TVs.
